Grab Bag Assortment 1
6/06/06
UCSD: Physics 8; 2006
Bad Movies (for physics)
• Though entertaining (and I like some of these), among
the most guilty betrayers of physics are:
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Student’
Student’s Choice #1
Bad movie physics
3D glasses
Sunscreen/UV damage
Life, other planets, galaxies
Unusual lights (black lights, neon)
Armageddon! (at the top of the list for a reason)
Mummy movies
Tomb Raider
The Day After Tomorrow
The Core
Cliffhanger (couldn’t even bear the previews)
Mission Impossible (any of them)
Speed (fun, but wrong)
Mel Gibson, Schwarzenegger, James Bond movies
• Interesting case study: Armageddon vs. Deep Impact
– Deep Impact hired science consultants and did okay
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UCSD: Physics 8; 2006
UCSD: Physics 8; 2006
Themes of physics misrepresentation
Movie Examples…
Examples…
• Goldeneye,
Goldeneye, catch up to airplane
• Everything goes BOOM, and explodes in huge fireball
– Terminal velocity of human: 50 m/s, up to 70 m/s if you
reduce your effective area by a factor of two
– Terminal velocity of plane in dive configuration:
about 90 m/s (more with engine at full power)
– Got a late start, too…
– Also problem pulling out of dive!
– Real life more often just crunches (we’re not loaded with dynamite)
• Momentum seldom conserved
– Bullet sends victim flying out window, shooter remains motionless
• Hearing sound in space
– no air to carry sound waves
• Seeing laser beams in space
– What are they reflecting off of? Is it smoky?
– Plane terminal velocity:
• Aerodynamic spaceships, airplane-like maneuvering
• Exploding rather than imploding submarines
• Fake props: wrong inertia properties
• given best glide 10:1 at 30 m/s (on the slow side):
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– Raiders of the Lost Arc: swiped huge gold statue like it was nothing!
Spring 2006
Lecture 19
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Spring 2006
drops at 3 m/s = v/10, so mgh mgv/10 Watts expended
drag force F over v m/s F·v Watts = mgv/10
F = mg/10 at best glide speed
F proportional to v 2, so F = mg terminal velocity condition is met at
about 3 times best glide speed > 90 m/s
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Grab Bag Assortment 1
6/06/06
UCSD: Physics 8; 2006
UCSD: Physics 8; 2006
Examples, continued
3D glasses: Stereo Vision
• Speed,
Speed, bus jump
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150-200 ft, level (call it 45 m)
bus at 30 m/s (67 mph): takes 1.5 seconds to cross
drops 11 m (36 ft) in 1.5 s
could work, at 15-20 degree launch angle, no air drag
left-eye view
• Websites
right-eye view
– www.pbs.org/teachersource/whats_new/science/aug01.shtm
– www.space.com/opinionscolumns/opinions/plait_000217.html
– www.badastronomy.com/
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Spring 2006
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereo_vision
UCSD: Physics 8; 2006
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UCSD: Physics 8; 2006
Putting it together
3D Glasses
• 3D films are shot with two cameras side-by-side mimicking your
eyes
• If projected on the same screen, must somehow let your left eye
know to pay attention to left image,
image, and right eye know to pay
attention to right image
• Can use color:
– blue image/blue filter for one eye, red image/red filter for other
– but can’t do this for color movie!
• Example red/blue scheme
– actually, the glasses pictured
below go the wrong way:
– the right eye wants to see red
– how do we tell? Look at the
left ear: for which eye is the
background more blocked?
• Can use polarization:
– could do vertical for left, horizontal for right
– or 45° one way vs. the other way
– glasses will appear gray
• In both cases, projection and detection must be separated into
different “channels”
channels”
Spring 2006
Lecture 19
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Spring 2006
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Grab Bag Assortment 1
6/06/06
UCSD: Physics 8; 2006
UCSD: Physics 8; 2006
What does UV do that’
that’s so bad anyway?
Sunscreen
• Light comes in little bundles called photons
• The energy of a photon is proportional to its
frequency
• UV is short wavelength, thus high frequency
• A coating of highly UV-absorbing molecules
– UVB: 290–320 nm: sunburn
– UVA: 320–400 nm: long-term skin damage/aging
• SPF: protection factor
– thus high-energy
• UV photons have enough energy to destroy chemical
bonds
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changes chemistry
pigments broken up colors fade
can cause cancerous change to DNA in skin cell
used in autoclaves to sterilize equipment (UV kills microbes)
– if you burn in half-hour, SPF 10 will protect you for 5 hours
– a thin, white t-shirt may be only SPF 4 or so
– sitting in shade but with lots of blue sky exposure may be
SPF 4
• All that absorption in such a thin layer?!
– Ozone is already SPF 10, and only 3 mm thick (if
concentrated to one layer) in our atmosphere
• if you burn in 30 minutes, that’ll be 3 minutes in space!
– put in liquid form (density) and now only 3 microns thick!
Spring 2006
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UCSD: Physics 8; 2006
UCSD: Physics 8; 2006
What’
What’s responsible for selective
absorption?
Paper Analog to Sunscreen
Reflected light (in
this case, sunlight)
off of paper appearing:
• Carotene
– makes carrots orange, tomatoes
red, daffodils yellow, leaves turn
– must absorb blue light
blue
green
yellow
orange
red
black
• Long, organic molecular chain
– most dyes, pigments are such
– resonances in optical light
Note pigment in yellow
paper is good at
absorbing 400–500 nm
Sunscreen works the same way: the molecules contained in sunscreen
have a resonance absorption in the ultraviolet
The absorbed UV turns into molecular vibration heat
white paper would be a flat line at 100%
Spring 2006
Lecture 19
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Spring 2006
Sunscreen is similar,
but optimized for
UVA + UVB
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Grab Bag Assortment 1
6/06/06
UCSD: Physics 8; 2006
The UV sky
sun
The blue sky has evermore flux at UV
wavelengths, so that
it is not a negligible
source of sunburning
light.
On top of the blue sky
spectrum is plotted a
theoretical 1/ 4 model
for molecular scattering,
which fits reasonably
well.
sky
Though not in words, this explains why the sky is blue!
The Place of Humans in the Cosmos
This means the sky is
16 times brighter at
UVB (300 nm) than at
600 nm
Spring 2006
Life in the Universe?
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UCSD: Physics 8; 2006
UCSD: Physics 8; 2006
Our Place in Space
Our Place in Time
• The universe is unimaginably big
• Modern humans have been around maybe 200,000
years
• This is about 0.001% the age of the universe
– our galaxy is one of > 100 billion visible to us
– our sun is one of ~100 billion stars in the galaxy
– if earth is the size of a BB, the sun is a beach ball 100 m
away, and the next star is 3/4 of the way around the earth
– even in the solar system, earth is only a grain
– earth mass is <0.0003% of solar system mass
– and humans are tiny compared to the earth
– 2105/21010 = 10-5
– flash in the pan
• Compared to distance scale, this is sort-of like the
size of a galaxy compared to the size of the whole
universe
• Feeling Insignificant?
• We are not at the center of:
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the solar system
the galaxy
the universe
attention
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Lecture 19
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Grab Bag Assortment 1
6/06/06
UCSD: Physics 8; 2006
UCSD: Physics 8; 2006
The Numbers
Are We Alone?
• 100 billion stars in Milky Way
• 10% with planetary systems
• Hard to believe that we are
• Assumptions (restrictive version):
– 10 billion planetary systems
• Say 1% of planetary systems have habitable planets
– must have solid planet to start life
– planet must be in habitable zone (liquid water)
– >10% of stars have planets
– 100 million planets
• Pick very long odds for life formation: one-in-a-million
– now 100 life-bearing planets in Milky Way
• Now multiply by 100 billion galaxies in visible universe
• already see >5%, and just getting started
– 10 trillion life-bearing planets in visible universe
– life forms given energy input and non-destructive
environment
• How many have (or have at one time had) intelligent life?
– very difficult to know—related question: how long does intelligent life
persist?
• no supernovae nearby, no heavy comet bombardment, etc.
• Why don’
don’t they visit?
– same reason we haven’t gone farther than our own moon: space is way
too vast
– we may never venture even to the nearest star
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Spring 2006
UCSD: Physics 8; 2006
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UCSD: Physics 8; 2006
Planetary systems known to date
• 146 planetary systems discovered in last 10 years
– 170 planets total
– 18 multi-planet systems
• Discovered by seeing star wiggle under gravitational influence of
planet
http://exoplanets.org
– tends to find BIG planets CLOSE to the parent star (biased)
red points are
individual
measurements
(with error
bars)
black line is
best-fit elliptical
orbit
8 MJUP at 2.88
A.U., 0.29 ecc.
sun’s path in 65 years
Spring 2006
Lecture 19
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Spring 2006
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Grab Bag Assortment 1
6/06/06
UCSD: Physics 8; 2006
Galaxies: Islands of stars
UCSD: Physics 8; 2006
How do we know: by their spectra
Central Virgo Cluster
Andromeda Galaxy: our closest “big” neighbor
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Spring 2006
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UCSD: Physics 8; 2006
UCSD: Physics 8; 2006
Galaxies as far as the “eye”
eye” can see
Fluorescent lights
• Fluorescent lights stimulate
emission among atoms like argon,
mercury, neon
– they do this by ionizing the gas
with high voltage
– as electrons recombine with ions,
they emit light at discrete
wavelengths, or lines
• Mercury puts out a strong line at
254 nm (UV)
– this (65%) and other lines hit the
phosphor coating on the inside of
the tube and stimulate emission in
the visible part of the spectrum
• A neon light simply has neon gas
in the tube
Montage of the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field: ALL are galaxies!
Spring 2006
Lecture 19
– spectrum is characteristic of neon
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Grab Bag Assortment 1
6/06/06
UCSD: Physics 8; 2006
UCSD: Physics 8; 2006
Fluorescent Spectrum
• http://mo-www.harvard.edu/Java/MiniSpectroscopy.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Fluorescent_lighting_s
pectrum_peaks_labelled.gif
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Spring 2006
Hg: mercury; Tb: Terbium; Eu: Europium
Hg
Hg
Tb
Tb
Hg
Hg
Eu
Tb
Eu
Eu
Eu
Eu
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Black Lights
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_light
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standard Hg-driven flourescence
single europium-based phosphor (SrB4O7F:Eu2+)
also uses glass that blocks visible light > 400 nm
many objects absorb the UV light and themselves fluoresce
1. Eu
2. Hg
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UCSD: Physics 8; 2006
Assignments
• HW8 due 6/8: 14.E.3, 14.E.8, 14.E.10, 14.E.11,
14.E.12, plus additional required questions
accessible on website
• EC due by Thursday (start today if not already!!)
• Q/O # 5 due Friday 6/9
• Final Exam Wed 6/14 3-6 PM WLH 2005
– #2 pencil and light-green scantron form required
– calculator okay
• will have study guide and review session as for
midterm
Spring 2006
Lecture 19
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